End feud, CM tells rural poll victors

KOLKATA: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, in a stern warning to the newly elected zilla parishad candidates on Monday, asked them to rise above personal feuds and keep up with the green surge till the Lok Sabha polls.

Mamata is upbeat with the projected Lok Sabha tally extrapolated from the grassroots that puts Trinamool's seats at 27 out of 42, a prospect that would give her bargaining power in national politics.

While addressing the zilla parishad candidates at the Town Hall, the chief minister asked the representatives to concentrate on development projects and see to it that the goodies reach the grassroots even in places where the party could not form the board. Trinamool is likely to take stock of the situation in its general council meeting in September.

The chief minister held meetings with the leaders of North Bengal districts and advised them on their course in panchayat samitis and panchayats that went with the opposition. She urged North Bengal representatives to expedite development work that would help the party improve its performance in the LS polls. She later sat with the south Bengal representatives. The meeting will continue till Tuesday.

According to sources, the chief minister has made it clear in the meeting that no inner feud would be tolerated and that everybody has to work together so that rural development work gets implemented.

Only a few days back, two factions, allegedly of the party, clashed with each other in Salt Lake's Duttabad over survey work of the East-West Metro project.

Her priorities are the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act scheme, works under the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund, distribution of the Kisan credit cards and executing projects of the public health engineering department. The party has set up monitoring committees for each district to oversee the progress of development works.

Taking a cue from the review meeting she held with ministers and secretaries, the chief minister urged the elected representative to hurry up because the government work has suffered in the last three months when ministers were out in the hustings in the campaign for the panchayat polls.

The CM is scheduled to start visiting the districts from September 10 to look at the progress of development works.